Opinion Contributor

Pass the immigration bill

Immigration is about tone and values, the authors write. | AP Photos

By DAVID PLOUFFE and STEVE SCHMIDT | 7/15/13 11:26 AM EDT

It seems like only yesterday that George W. Bush won 44 percent of the Hispanic vote, putting the Grand Old Party on the brink of a historic achievement: majority support among Hispanic-Americans. At that moment, many Republicans pledged to comprehensively fix our broken immigration system. Immigration reform wasn’t just good politics, it was the right thing to do for our country. And it still is today.

Americans across the political spectrum — including our former bosses President Obama, President Bush and Sen. John McCain — know we need to fix the broken immigration system, and they agree on how to do it. Ramped-up security on the border will crack down on illegal crossings while making our border cities and towns safer. Immigrants coming out of the shadows to pay a fine and taxes means that everyone will finally be doing their part, and no one will get a free ride. And when 11 million undocumented immigrants go to the back of the line so they can learn English and earn their citizenship, they’ll work hard, start businesses, create jobs, invent new technologies, and fight and die for this country. That’s how we build America — on the strength of our diversity.

Text Size

-

+

reset

It’s anyone’s guess what the long-term political outcome of passing immigration reform will be. Some say passing immigration is a silver bullet for curing what ails Republicans with Hispanics. That’s wrong. But until it passes, Hispanic voters will not even listen to what Republicans offer on other issues like the economy and education. As the Republican National Committee rightly concluded in its 2012 post-mortem, “if Hispanics think we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies.”

This analysis is spot-on. Immigration is about tone and values: fairness, responsibility, playing by the rules. Most importantly for Republicans in Washington, this debate is about displaying tolerance. Killing immigration reform would be the latest example of a Republican vision for a less open and less tolerant America that is wildly out of touch with voters today.

Rapidly changing demographics compound the GOP’s woes – especially at the presidential level. Since 1992, the white share of the national electorate has dropped in every presidential contest and fallen by 5 percent on average across the core battleground states in the last eight years. The Hispanic share of the electorate has nearly doubled in places like Colorado and Nevada since 2004, and Hispanics turned out in record numbers nationally in 2012.

But this isn’t just presidential-sized problem for Republicans. It can hurt many of them where they least expect it but it matters most: back home in their districts. That’s because some of the fastest-growing media markets among Hispanics are in places like Charlotte, Atlanta, Oklahoma City, Seattle, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Kansas City – places that will matter electorally outside of the presidential race in every cycle.

Republican support-levels are tanking among Hispanics as fast as this critical voting bloc is growing. Nationally, Obama won more Hispanic votes than any candidate, ever. The president won more than 70 percent of the Hispanic vote in Nevada, the highest share of the Hispanic vote for any Democratic presidential candidate ever in Florida (he was also the first Democrat to win the Cuban vote), and more than doubled his winning margin from four years earlier in Colorado.

A less tolerant, less open Republican Party that kills immigration reform will most certainly keep these states in the Democratic column for years to come. And it’s not just because of Hispanic voters. The fast-growing Asian-American community, not to mention young voters across the board, also sees the immigration issue as a decisive driver of how they plan to vote.

If Republicans become part of the solution on immigration, might Democratic majorities among Hispanic voters eventually shrink? Yes. But for those Democrats secretly rooting for immigration reform to fail, this opportunity may not come around for a very long time. Losing a few votes in an election is a small price to pay for changing the lives of millions of people for the better.

There are enough votes in the House to pass comprehensive immigration reform if members work to get to yes instead of trying to find every excuse for no. It will be difficult and require creativity. Smart messaging in Iowa that focuses on illegal immigrants paying a fine and taxes will be different from a message that resonates in California. But no matter how you spin it, this is sound policy and good politics, and it’s in the best interest of both parties to send this bill to the president’s desk.

David Plouffe was campaign manager of the 2008 Obama campaign and a senior adviser to President Obama, and Steve Schmidt was senior adviser to the 2008 McCain campaign and an adviser in the George W. Bush administration.